By happy serendipity two books of related interest caught my attention today. The first is David Cowan’s Economic Parables: The Monetary Teachings of Jesus Christ (Paternoster, 2007). Michael Kruse mends the book in a brief review. The other book is a newly-announced Christianity Today award winner in the “Biblical Studies” category. The judges describe Klyne R. Snodgrass’ Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus as “a superb culmination of career-long reflection on one of the most...

This guy fails the ‘anthropological Rorshach’ test: Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population. The 2 child limit that Porritt encourages is not just an attempt to limit population growth, but is instead a policy that would put the...

On the first half of today’s installment of The Diane Rehm Show, Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute got off a good line in the midst of a discussion concerning federal regulation of emission standards. Concerning the performance of the American car manufacturers parison to that of foreign automakers, and the moral hazard involved in the various bailouts, Taylor said, “Capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy is like Christianity without the threat of hell. It doesn’t work...

This week we introduce a new regular feature we’re calling “PowerBlog Ramblings” (PBR). The concept is simple: we’ll post a question along with some background for why that question has been selected, and various PowerBlog contributors and guests will respond to that question. We’ve named this feature “PowerBlog Ramblings” in part as an allusion to the publication with which the institute’s namesake Lord Acton was closely associated for a time, The Rambler, which was in part aimed “to provide a...

An awesome piece from Mary Eberstadt in First Things… She starts with a description of the intellectual elite’s thoughts munism before the fall of the Berlin Wall– despite the evidences. She then cites Jeane Kirkpatrick’s contemporary analysis in her essay of the title echoed by Eberstadt: “The Will to Disbelieve”. From there, Ebestadt draws an analogy to “the sexual revolution”– “the powerful will to disbelieve in the harmful effects of another world-changing social and moral force governed by bad ideas”....

Government is most surely a divinely-ordained reality, and a blessing that we must celebrate. But governments realize their task when they recognize their own divinely-ordained limits. Government exists as a form mon grace to preserve the world for ing, when the government as an order of preservation will give way to a divine monarchy (“Every knee will bow.”). In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the government is here to keep “open” the orders of the world for Christ. But when...

Dire predictions about the “death of capitalism” reveal a deep ignorance about the nature of the current economic crisis — technical and moral. “Markets are bined activities of millions of individuals and families,” Michael Miller writes in this week’s Acton Commentary. “They are posed merely of some guys on Wall Street; they are made up by us.” Read mentary over at Acton’s website, and share your thoughts ments here. ...

mentary today looks at President Obama’s deft use of narrative — the art of story telling — to inspire and motivate. By his own admission, Obama has taken a page from the playbook of the Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon told the Chicago Tribune last year that Obama has “a narrative reach” and a talent for story telling that reminds him of the late president. Reagan “made other people a part of his own narrative, and...

As the media bombard us with misleading language describing the role of government in the economy (e.g., that a stimulus plan will “inject money” or “create jobs”), those who know better need to keep up a steady drumbeat mon sense concerning the potential and track record of the state’s involvement in economic affairs. Long-time Acton associate Paul Cleveland’s newly published Unmasking the Sacred Lies is a valuable contribution to the effort. Professor of Economics at Birmingham-Southern College, bines here a...

In response to the question, “What is wrong with socialism?” Writing well over 2000 years ago, Aristotle answered Plato, whose Republic advocated socialism, thusly: What mon to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. People pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what mon; or, at any rate, they care for it only to the extent to which each is individually concerned. Even when there is no other cause for inattention, people are...